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Nice to meet you! My name’s plain & simple Ann, without even the fanciful 'e.' Glad you found your way here into some quiet. I know — it can get a bit loud out there. Maybe you’d like to wander a bit in the quiet — — Let's connect...
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{Video Concert on the Farm}How the Poor & Rich Might find Release: The Release of a Third World Symphony

The day after he walks out of the wheat field, packs his guitar into that beat up, duct-taped case and heads south again, music on his mind.

But Shaun Grove’s music, his songs stay behind. Playing loud on the stereo here the next morning, the washing machine spinning and the kids all singing words by heart. Can you listen to one disk of songs a few thousand times?

That’s what he’s prayed for — for songs that have the dust of the despairing in them, the hope of the hurting.

Songs that are as deep as the long roads they’ve travelled down; music that has seen the the world and has witnessed heaven come down — come to the slums, the orphans, and the beggars with their hands held out for a grazing of grace.

It’s music that’s been somewhere — straight to the feet of God — and won’t let us go till we come too.

And I can hear it in the lyrics — how God’s heard and answered the prayers. Of the singer and the sinner and the scrounger. These are songs that blind the blind with grace, that bust the beggar free — the one with empty hands and the one with hands right full.

‘Istand for a moment by the table, looking out a wet window to the south. One of the boys comes now, a son with his hood pulled up against early morning rain. I watch him, love of ours, meandering up the back walk. His head is bent low, feet finding all the puddles.

He’s splashing through ancient water, water from the beginning that has cycled through all centuries, puddle-jumped by a thousand young boys through the ages and I wonder if the water Adam knew falls here.

The clothesline strings across the back walk. Droplets reel out, a jeweled necklace, framing now. From one forgotten clothespin hangs a singular raindrop.

And I see: the clothesline is the beam, the wooden clothespin an upright post.

I see a cross in the clothespin.

Son looks up, sees me at the window, and he waves, all a smile.

And the droplet falls from the cross clothespin — grace upon us.

And for a moment, longer, long, I blaze.

This child, this time, this day, we are all here, grace, all grace, and this fountain of Great Grace falls all around and it could flow through us and on into the world, and with borrowed breath I am fueled, a torch in October rains.

I am blessed :I can bless :So this is happiness…

If I close these fingers, try to hold, hoard the river—dam up the grace—won’t the water grow stagnant? The children and I once looked at photos of the dead Dead Sea, and we read how the Jordan River streams into the sea and nothing flows out of the sea and the salt content rises and everything dies. I think of this. That fullness can grow foul. Grace is alive — living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies … waters that have no life.

I turn my hand over, spread my fingers open. I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain … again, again, again.

Third World Symphony keeps playing here — rare, heart-stirring music that tells the Gospel, that helps all the lost pieces in the world find their place. Their place In Him who is the only real Home.

Our only real Home is Christ and Cross, and the cross is endlessly raised where the poor bow. The poor give us this — turn us from the illusion of climbing ladders and never invite us to go higher, but to come lower — to where Christ is — to the lonely, the lost and the least.

It’s our burden of stuff that blinds us and the real danger of wealth is that it causes us to lose our vision — our vision of Christ.

The poor might release the rich and the rich might release the poor and only Christ can release us all from blindness to really see — and it is contemplating the love of Christ that makes us act out the love of Christ.

{If reading in a Reader, come for a front row seat & view this video from the farm, clicking here. Please consider scrolling to the to top of the blog to pause the blog music directly under the header, by clicking the two black bars under “bookshelf” in the navigation bar. ~blush~ Thank you for grace.)

Shaun Groves is a wise and godly friend, a Dove nominated singer/songwriter, and an advocate traveling for Compassion International. Not only is he helping Christians discover what they were saved for, but he’s a voice for children around the world, desperate to be saved from poverty, saved into the hope Christ alone can extend. His album, Third World Symphony, releases today on iTunes(or CDs can be found here.) We’re playing in here on the farm — on repeat. God is doing something in us in this music that makes us us hunger to be bread, broken and given. God taking music and lyrics and doing eternal work on the inside — this is music worth it because it exalts the worth of who He is. This is no small thing… but a global thing. An all world- symphony….

Join me in #365GIFT — and become a brokenhearted hallelujah, a GIFT to the world, every day for a year, living broken and given, one intentional act of brokenhearted compassion at a time. Subscribe to posts and let’s begin together.